Donald Trump Will Judge You

I want the story about John Bolton's mustache to be true so very, very badly.

In case you missed it, and it's hard to believe anyone really did, El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago was considering putting Evil Santa into a fairly significant position in the national security apparatus—apparently to keep General Flynn company on those long nightwatches where the good general waits for the Muslims to emerge from his chiffarobe. Those of us with memories that extend longer than 20 minutes ago recall that Bolton is a first-class kook who likely would have us at war with half the world before lunch. That, however, as the Independent informs us, was not the reason for his disqualification from a critical position in the onrushing catastrophe. More than anything else, it seems Bolton failed a casting call.

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"That's the language he speaks. He's very aesthetic," said one person familiar with the transition team's internal deliberations. "You can come with somebody who is very much qualified for the job, but if they don't look the part, they're not going anywhere." Given Mr Trump's own background as a master brander and showman who ran beauty pageants as a sideline, it was probably inevitable that he would be looking beyond their résumés for a certain aesthetic in his supporting players. "Presentation is very important because you're representing America not only on the national stage but also the international stage, depending on the position," said Trump transition spokesman Jason Miller.

It was the mustache that killed his chances.

He didn't look the part. Honest to god, according to the head counselors at Camp Runamuck, that's what it was. Perhaps if he'd have twirled it while giggling horribly?

You can choose to be terrified by this method of staffing the government. I think it's hilarious. "A certain aesthetic in supporting players" is nice, too. (Madison? Too short. Franklin? Too old. Washington? God, those teeth. OK, this Hamilton guy looks OK. Let's give him a callback.) Apparently, the next government of the United States is going to run for 13 weeks and then get canceled and replaced by a government involving an orphan and a tender-hearted cop. Or some crime drama about coroners.

OK, let's just stop here for a minute. Conway is a career ratfcker. Her entire gig is saying nasty things on television. That's how she made her bones as one of the bench-strength TV talkers—Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, and the late Barbara Olson were the starters—during the pursuit of Bill Clinton's penis in the 1990s. She was all over TV, saying nasty things. That was how you made your bones back in the day. Bill Maher made her a regular on her show. She even married one of the top ratcfckers on the legal side of the Clinton wars. Per The New Yorker:

Kellyanne's husband is George T. Conway III, who as a young lawyer played a historic—and largely hidden—role in the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Conway, a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, worked at the New York City firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and was a member of the Federalist Society, the conservative organization that led many of the legal challenges to the Clinton Administration. When Paula Jones sued Bill Clinton for sexual harassment, Conway wrote the Supreme Court brief, though his name never appeared on it. The Court, in a landmark decision, agreed with Jones's argument that a sitting President could face a civil lawsuit. During depositions in the lawsuit, Clinton denied having a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, which eventually led to his impeachment trial. George Conway became deeply involved in getting out information from the depositions. During that period, he reportedly e-mailed Matt Drudge an infamous scoop about the shape of Clinton's penis.

If Kellyanne really had a "soft-spoken approach," she'd have been a very successful real-estate lawyer in suburban New Jersey of whom nobody ever had heard a word. Anyway, let the sweetening of the beat continue. Via the Times:

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Ms. Conway was credited during the campaign, even by Democrats who opposed her, with smoothing out some of Mr. Trump's most jagged edges in her appearances on television. Mr. Trump is deeply fond of Ms. Conway, whose job as counselor will give her frequent access to the president. A "Trump whisperer" during the campaign who was particularly adept at explaining his appeal to voters, Ms. Conway will serve as one of the chief protectors of Mr. Trump's political brand.

Speaking of that political brand, let's move along to other members of the plutocratic Undead. Remember leveraged buyouts? Junk bonds? They were the Wall Street playtoys before everybody realized how much money you could make bundling home loans together and selling them off to the suckers. This was back when Donald Trump merely was a regional annoyance. They were the inspiration behind Oliver Stone's Wall Street, which came before Margin Call, The Big Short, and Inside Job as documents about how an earlier passel of greedy bastards could steal the national economy. Anyway, somebody rolled the stone away from the entrance to the burial vault, and out comes Carl Icahn, the prototypical 1980s shark, to advise the president on "regulatory matters." Per CNN Money:

"It's time to break free of excessive regulation and let our entrepreneurs do what they do best: create jobs and support communities," Icahn said in the announcement. "President-elect Trump is serious about helping American families, and regulatory reform will be a critical component of making America work again." Icahn, who has advised Trump on some of the people picked to run regulatory agencies, claims an expertise "in seeing stupid things being done" by government agencies. Icahn says agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency are ruining businesses for no reason. "I'm not anti regulation. I'm anti the stupidity of some of these regulations and it has just run amok," he told CNN.

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I would remind everyone that this is the guy who, in 1985, bought TWA in a hostile takeover and then sold off all the airline's assets to pay off the loans he'd taken out to make the purchase in the first place. Via St. Louis Magazine:

Icahn, though he already had a fairly dark reputation for buying and breaking up companies, told TWA what it wanted to hear: He wanted to make it profitable. Profit was his goal, all right, but not TWA's. "He told employees TWA needed to grow to be competitive," says Jeff Darnall, who flew for the airline from 1989 until he was furloughed in 2003. "We took him at his word. It was an opportunity to be with an airline that was poised for growth." Icahn did help the airline grow, most notably by acquiring Ozark Airlines in 1986, an act that cemented TWA's dominance at its St. Louis hub. But soon enough, the party was over. "It became more and more apparent that Carl was not interested in growing the airline but in using TWA as a financial vehicle to acquire wealth for himself," Darnall says. In 1988, Icahn took what many consider the first step toward the airline's demise: He took TWA private. Icahn received $469 million in the deal, and TWA got something a little less attractive: $540 million in debt.

So, this is going to be the guy advising the president-elect on, for example, what SEC rules need to be pruned back so that the entrepreneurial spirit once again can flourish. Again, we recall the words of one Samuel Spade. The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.

UPDATE—This just in:

The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes

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